Here's a conditional prediction regarding a potential U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran from the the NYT today:

We don't know what's going on behind closed doors in Washington -- or what Mr. Olmert heard from Mr. Bush. But saber-rattling is not a strategy. And an attack on Iran by either country would be disastrous.

I think you need a catchy ratings system. Something like rottentomatoes or thumbs up or even the terror threat level.

Or an overall award or razzie thing:
The Cassandra, for the person whose pessimistic predictions were ignored but turned out to be correct.
The Sibyl, for someone who claims after the fact to have been right by capitalizing on the triviality or ambiguity of their predictions.
The Stopped Clock, for someone who is right now and then.
The Blind Pig, for someone who is usually wrong but manages to be impressively right once or a handful of times.

Dick Cheney, March 16, 2003: Now, I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators... .

Q: If your analysis is not correct, and we're not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?

Cheney: Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators... . The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.

19: I'm procrastinating working, man. I'll try to come up with something, but my memory, she is not so good. I blame my children.

Now that I think about it, I'll try to find Karl Rove's from an NPR interview just before the 2006 elections. Not exactly the same as a pundit prediction, but it should be included, since its ratio of confidence to accuracy was basically infinity.

Kloza noted that wholesale gasoline prices have fallen about 30 cents since the start of the year, and retail prices are just now beginning to come down.

But then recession or no recession, he expects gasoline prices to surge again to set a new record of over $3.22 a gallon sometime between March and May, when refiners leave stocks low and switch over to summer blends and traders anticipate the high-demand summer driving season.

"The same things that make the rally every spring are still there," he said.

But from May onward, he said prices could fall quickly, especially if there is a recession.

Pet Weather Rock award: For someone who makes correct predictions by saying only safe and obvious things. (from this old joke gift with a rock, and a card extolling its virtues: if it's frozen, it's cold. if it's wet, it's raining, if it's gone, it's been stolen.)

I couldn't find Billmon's archives within five minutes of searching, so I gave up. Who know what would be another good source? Brad Delong's site, which respects no fair use claims or pseudonyms, but which does have a pretty good internal search engine, iirc.

ROVE: No, you are not. I'm looking at 68 polls a week for candidates for the US House and US Senate, and Governor and you may be looking at 4-5 public polls a week that talk attitudes nationally.

SIEGEL: I don't want to have you to call races...

ROVE: I'm looking at all of these Robert and adding them up. I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with a different math but you are entitled to your math and I'm entitled to THE math.

SIEGEL: I don't know if we're entitled to a different math but your...

there were a lot of rosy predictions about Iraq's elections, i.e. David Brooks:

Washington will continue to get distracted by microscandals about leaks and such, but the Iraqi constitutional process is the most important thing that will be happening in the world in the next year. If it succeeds, Iraq really will be a beacon of freedom in the Middle East. The Americans who have died in Iraq will have given their lives in a truly noble cause.

There's something about our venture into Iraq that is inspiringly, painfully, embarrassingly and quintessentially American. No other nation would have been hopeful enough to try to evangelize for democracy across the Middle East. No other nation would have been naive enough to do it this badly. No other nation would be adaptable enough to recover from its own innocence and muddle its way to success, as I suspect we are about to do.

24- This one is perfect. I think you have to make it something people are thinking about now, mrh. Something like a mid-term elections prediction won't be interesting now. Rupert Murdoch saying the Iraq War would bring $20/gallon gas would be a good one.

Reading a trial transcript now, and one of the lawyers is admonishing the jury pool not to go looking stuff up on the internet about the case: "I know it's tempting. Lickopedia and all." Cracking me up. Tempted to google that, of course, but...

With sports predictions, you want to highlight ones that are made on the basis of alleged reporting - so-and-so will sign with such-and-such team; Coach so-and-so will be fired, etc.

With political predictions, I think you want to focus on the predictions that are specifically designed to implicate policy: Iraqis will greet us with candy, therefore we should invade; temperatures will go down, therefore we ought not worry about global warming, etc.

Sports guys are obliged to predict the Super Bowl, and nobody can be expected to take that seriously; likewise, political pundits often use an end-of-the-year column to make humorous/speculative predictions about the coming year.

I've always envisioned a punditpredictions web site that would consist of the traditional sections of a daily newspaper - an A-section given over to hard news predictions, and other sections discussing sports, finance and soft news (Lohan is pregnant; TomKat divorcing, etc.)

I remember seeing an ad for Us magazine featuring past covers. Whoever designed the ad wasn't the least bit self-conscious about the fact that one of the covers referred to events that never happened. (Somebody's pregnancy, I think.)

I'm not good at remembering predictions, but a few thoughts for anyone who wants to do the research. Some of them are oldish but still interesting, I think:

- what the surge would accomplish
- whether Bill would help or hurt Hillary's campaign
- the 3 House seats we picked up in the South
- Dem pundits (DailyKos, TPM)
- Juan Williams (he's such a hedger that he's probably not made direct projections, but it would be nice to find one)
- Friedman & Brooks; there have got to be some doozies

He believes that deposing the Iraqi leader would lead to cheaper oil. "The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy...would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country."

Oil at the time was seen as very expensive - $35 or so a barrel. Now it's about $135 a barrel.

By the way, Moyers turning the table on the O'Reilly ambush was fun viewing.

It's nice to see an old-fashioned honorable journalist exhibit some swagger, instead of being all hunkered down and intimidated. The transcript doesn't really do it justice because it doesn't convey Moyers' amusement at being pestered by Bill O'Reilly's troll.

By the way, Moyers turning the table on the O'Reilly ambush was fun viewing.

It's nice to see an old-fashioned honorable journalist exhibit some swagger, instead of being all hunkered down and intimidated. The transcript doesn't really do it justice because it doesn't convey Moyers' amusement at being pestered by Bill O'Reilly's troll.

We have seen Weird Times in this country before, but the year 2000 is beginning to look super weird. This time, there really is nobody flying the plane. ... We are living in dangerously weird times now.....

There is an eerie sense of Panic in the air, a silent Fear and Uncertainty that comes with once-reliable faiths and truths and solid Institutions that are no longer safe to believe in. ... There is a Presidential Election, right on schedule, but somehow there is no President. A new Congress is elected, like always, but somehow there is no real Congress at all -- not as we knew it, anyway, and whatever passes for Congress will be as helpless and weak as Whoever has to pass for the "New President."

If this were the world of sports, it would be like playing a Super Bowl that goes into 19 scoreless Overtimes and never actually Ends. ... or four L.A. Lakers stars being murdered in different places on the same day. Guaranteed Fear and Loathing. Abandon all hope. Prepare for the Weirdness. Get familiar with Cannibalism.

"Bush is a war president, and war presidents are judged by whether they win or lose their war. So to be a successful president, Bush has to win in Iraq. Which I now think we can. Indeed, I think we will."

"Many Americans will recoil from the prospect of being governed by an unchecked triumvirate of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. So the chances of a Republican winning the presidency in 2008 aren't bad."

Meanwhile, conservative talk radio, which I have been following with interest for almost 20 years, has become a tornado alley of hallucinatory holograms of Obama. He's a Marxist! A radical leftist! A hater of America! He's "not that bright"; he can't talk without a teleprompter. He knows nothing and has done less. His wife is a raging mass of anti-white racism. It's gotten to the point that I can hardly listen to my favorite shows, which were once both informative and entertaining. The hackneyed repetition is numbing and tedious, and the overt character assassination is ethically indefensible. Talk radio will lose its broad audience if it continues on this nakedly partisan path.

I don't know if that is just total BS that she would know is not true if she thought about it for a second...or if she is actually saying something in that last sentence.

Hey! Here's one he got right: "We are tempted to comment, in these last days before the war, on the U.N., and the French, and the Democrats. But the war itself will clarify who was right and who was wrong about weapons of mass destruction."

"Starts"! There is a prediction in there but it is actually something like: "If even a dumbshit like me can now discern how partisan they have become, they will lose their 'broad' audience." The change is within Ms. Paglia (and others of her ilk one hopes) .

If a prediction is phrased as "If A happens, then B will happen"...under the impression that A has not already happened...but A has in fact already happened, and B has not happened -- then that prediction has actually achieved infinite wrongness in two dimensions.

First, it has achieved infinite wrongness as measured by wrongness divided by temporal proximity to the thing being predicted.

Second, it has achieved infinite wrongness in that it posits that the thing predicted not only could happen, but will happen -- however, the thing predicted cannot possibly happen, since the opportunity for it to happen has already passed, and it didn't happen.

mrh, I don't know if you want to collect predictions from schlubs, or only from pundits, but here's Hamilton-Lovecraft's official electoral map prediction for the 2008 election in increasing specificity: